how is shopify different from squaree

what's up guys i'm paul and welcome to,the ecommerce gold youtube channel now,in this video we're going to be,comparing squares online store offering,against shopify to see which one is the,better option for your e-commerce,business and to compare these two we're,going to be looking at the pricing where,you get for your money and a quick,overview of what these two platforms are,like to use to hopefully give you an,idea of which one is going to work for,you so let's get started,so the first thing i'm going to be,looking at is the pricing of the two,platforms and as you can clearly see on,screen square is the cheaper option out,of the two even more so with the fact,that they offer a completely free plan,now there are some limitations on the,free plan you're limited to 500,megabytes data storage you can't use,your own custom domain name and there is,a square advert placed in the footer of,the site but it is still completely free,and you get access to most of the,features that square offers as well but,just going back to pricing as you can,see shopify is the more expensive of the,two and there is a more expensive,shopify option as well which is shopify,plus which is for basically enterprise,level e-commerce businesses and this,starts from around about 1500 a month,but there is another fee that shopify,charges that makes them an even more,expensive option so if you scroll down a,bit as you can see i've highlighted it,here,is that they charge a transaction fee,for any payment received outside of,shopify's own payment gateway so if,you're using any kind of third-party,platform whether it's things like paypal,or amazon pay you have to pay this,transaction fee now it does depend on,the package you're on as to the,transaction fee you pay because if,you're on the basic package it's two,percent if you're on the standard,package it's one percent and if you're,on the advanced it drops to 0.5,but this is still a fee that you need to,factor in and on top of the monthly,subscription cost it can make shopify,quite an expensive option,now as it's on screen i'm going to,quickly talk about the free trials now,as i've already mentioned square offers,a completely free package and this is in,place of a free trial,shopify on the other hand offer a 14 day,free trial which allows you to test the,platform out but you can't take any live,orders like you can with squares free,plan or you can actually test it out,with live customers so it is a little,bit limited in that way but you can,create test orders and things like that,to truly test the platform out now if,you want to try either of these out for,yourself i will leave links in the,description to both square and shopify,if you want to go and try them out for,yourself so with the price now the way,let's talk about what you actually get,for your money and the first thing is,features now i'm not going to go through,every single feature that both platforms,offer because basically that'd be me,just reading off the screen and that'd,be incredibly boring and this video,would be super long and i have a,tendency to make long videos anyway,but there are two main things i want to,talk about when it comes to features the,first one is the types of products you,can sell as standard because with square,they offer a variety of different,product types if we just jump into the,square dashboard quickly i'll show you,exactly what i mean so if we add a new,product,when it loads,it's been a bit slow today create a new,item,as you can see you've got item type,there's lots of different item types you,can sell so you can sell physical,products digital products services,membership type products there is a good,selection of different product types you,can sell whereas with shopify on the,other hand you are limited as standard,to selling just physical products and,service based products if you want to,sell any other types of products so a,digital product with a download you're,going to have to install an app for this,or if you want to sell memberships or,things like that you're going to have to,use an app for this and to get the,decent features about good features,these are going to be paid for options,which is something else you do need to,consider,the other thing i want to talk about,when it comes to features is payment,gateways because when it comes to,payment gateway options square is really,limited,and this is mainly because square is,basically a payment gateway that's how,they actually started was as a payment,provider and then they ventured into,basically the world of e-commerce when,they acquired weebly in 2018 but when it,comes to payment gateways as you can see,on screen is quite limited but on the,free package and the professional,package which is the entry level paid,option you only get squares payment,gateway apple pay and google pay which,is run through the square payment,gateway if you want to add paypal you,need to go onto one of the two top paid,options but when it comes to payment,gateways that's it there's no more,options available you're limited to them,four options,shopify on the other hand has a huge,selection of payment gateways if you,just scroll down a bit as you can see,there is a huge number to choose from,and this is just a snapshot there's,actually i think there's over 100 you,can actually choose from on shopify with,some being very country specific because,it's a global platform so there is a,massive choice of payment gateways,available on shopify but do remember,what i've already said is if you're,using a third-party payment gateway you,are going to have to pay that,transaction fee you only don't pay if,you're using shopify payments,and both platforms are for an app store,as well shopify's one has over 3 000 to,choose from which is a huge selection,and offers a variety of different,features and functionality as well as,integrations with third-party platforms,now square does offer their own app,marketplace as well but it has a much,smaller selection and most of these are,actually integrations with other,software rather than features that you,can add to your store also not all of,the apps in there are just for the,online store some of them are for the,point of sale system or other services,the square offers so they're not all,available for the online store,and also some of these are paid for,options this applies to both square and,shopify when it comes to the app so when,you are installing these check to see,how much they cost because you're,probably going to be billed on a monthly,basis for these apps as well so it's,another cost that you do need to factor,in,but basically that's an overview of the,features you do get from both platforms,and next up i want to talk about the,theme selection and customization,because you want to have a good looking,site you want it to look good for your,customers so what do these two platforms,offer well when it comes to theme,selection square is very very limited,because you get one default theme which,you can then customize to fit your,branding,so if we just jump into our square,dashboard if we come out of that page,and we go into website and edit site it,brings up the theme customizer and it's,actually a really good theme customizer,it's one of the better ones that i've,used and especially as this is all,available on the free package as well,it's pretty impressive so when it comes,to the theme customizer you can actually,do quite a lot even though it's a pretty,basic quite generic looking theme there,are a lot of customization options,because you can choose which sections,are available on your home page you can,also create custom pages as well which,is really good a feature that's not,available on a lot of platforms and,there's a good selection of sections you,can choose from as well across a variety,of different options,there's also options for the header and,also footer as well and there's some,site design options which include colors,your logo and also fonts that are,available as well and some general style,options so overall a very good theme,customizer and the fact that you can,customize different pages on your site,is really really good so that's not,available in a lot of platforms but what,about shopify well if square is good,then shopify is very good when it comes,to theme selection and customization so,let's just jump back into our post by,the way if you want to check this post,out for yourself this is my full written,comparison between the two platforms,that's available on ecommercegold.com,and i will leave a link to that in the,description below as well,so we just scroll down a bit in 2021,shopify released their os 2.0 which was,a big upgrade to the theme selection and,customization options available on,shopify and it was definitely a good,improvement now shopify wasn't a real,slouch in this area anyway it was one of,the industry leaders but the new os 2.0,has taken it to a whole other level,now when it comes to theme selection,available directly from shopify there's,six free themes and there's 68 paid,options ranging from 150 to 350 and,these are available directly through the,shopify theme store but you can also get,themes outside of shopify as well if you,go to marketplaces such as themeforest,there's over a thousand themes you can,choose from there you can also go direct,to developers and buy themes directly,from them so there's actually thousands,of themes you can choose from from,shopify there's a massive amount you,just have to go and look for them but,directly from shopify there's a six free,and 68 paid options that you can choose,from,but what's that like when it comes to,customization because that's where the,big change with the os 2.0 come in so if,you jump into our shopify dashboard go,into online store and open the,customizer,click on customize it brings it up and,it looks quite similar to squares,customizer in a way but what you can do,is you can really customize every single,page on your site except for the blog,pages that's still somewhat limited for,other pages you can create really custom,pages you can also create custom,templates for pages as well which is,really really good,and when it comes to sections there's a,good number to choose from you can also,set your options for your announcement,bar which goes at the top you've got,header options then you've got your,sections which you can choose to add,remove or rearrange and when it comes to,the section options that are available,there's a good selection to choose from,so if we go and show more we'll show all,the ones that are available and there's,different customization options,available for each one of these sections,there's lots of options to choose from,and you've also got your theme settings,as well as you can see lots of options,in here,now some of the premium themes are going,to come with a few more options as well,because this is one of the free ones,that's available from shopify so it's a,massive amount of options when it comes,to theme customization and as i say you,can do it on pretty much every different,page on your site except for blog pages,i would like to see this builder,available for your blog pages as well,because it will just take that to a,whole nother level but overall the theme,customization on shopify is,excellent i don't say that very often,but it is really really good and there's,not much you can't do when it comes to,customizing the look and feel of a,shopify store,so next up let's talk about support,because when you're using a hosted,platform which is what both of these,options are you want support to be,available because should you run into,any options you want to know that,somebody you can contact you can speak,to is going to help you resolve those,issues so what do these two platforms,offer well square off a good range of,options and these are available on every,single plan so you've got email support,and they'll aim to get back to you,within 48 hours there's phone support,that's available between 9am and 5pm,monday to friday and there's also a,community support forum which is a great,place to ask non-urgent questions and,you'll get support not only from people,who actually work for square but also,other members of the community as well,you may be able to provide a different,kind of insight to what you get directly,from square,now shopify takes this to another level,because they offer 24 7 support to all,of their users it doesn't matter what,plan you're on you get 24 7 support and,they offer another option when it comes,to support as well because just like,square they offer email support and also,phone support as well but you can,contact them via live chat and they also,have a community support forum as well,you can also reach out to them on,twitter if you want to as well and they,will get back to you if they can and,provide you with some assistance,so the final thing before we get into,using these two platforms is i just want,to talk about the hosting,because hosting is hugely important when,it comes to your ecommerce store because,it's a factor for not only ranking in,search engines but also conversion rates,as well you want to be on good quality,hosting that performs really well now,when it comes to the options that both,platforms offer they both run on pci,compliant hosting which you need for an,e-commerce store because it's the most,secure type of hosting available they,both offer unlimited bandwidth unlimited,storage except for the square free plan,you do have limited storage on that but,all the paid options are unlimited you,also get a free ssl certificate with,both of them as well,now the one thing i couldn't find with,square was whether they offer a content,delivery network i would assume they do,because they target lots of different,markets so i'm going to assume they do,have a cdn but i couldn't find any,information about that but i do know for,a fact that shopify has their own,content delivery network and it is a,pretty good setup now unfortunately i,wasn't able to test these two platforms,out well specifically i wasn't able to,test square out the reason is there's,not enough customer example sites,available on the square website so i,couldn't do my usual head-to-head,comparison testing which is a little bit,unfortunate so now that we've got what,you get for your money out the way let's,look at what these two platforms,actually like to use because i'd imagine,that's probably what you want to know so,the first thing we're going to talk,about is getting started with these two,platforms and i have to say getting,started with square is not the most,straightforward process in the world in,fact it's one of the most complicated,ones i've used i have all of the,e-commerce platforms i've tested which,is a lot this is because when you're,actually signing up to square you're not,signing up to just the online store,you're actually signing up to the,payment gateway so there's many more,steps to actually signing up and if you,just want to test it out this is,somewhat of a barrier and i wish square,would change this even if it was just a,14-day free trial of the online store so,you could test it out to see whether or,not you like it but once you've actually,gone through the sign up process you'll,be taken through to the main square,dashboard now the main square dashboard,is basically a hub for all of their,basically options that they offer with,square because it's not just an online,store builder they've also got their,points of sale and card reader and,things like that i just missed my finger,when i've done that but they do have all,these options so you have a central,square dashboard and then if you want to,go into your online store you have to,click on the online store option and it,will take you through to the square,dashboard which looks like this,now once you actually sign up and go,through into your square online store,dashboard you get this short setup guide,which actually is pretty good the only,thing that's missing from me is what's,missing from pretty much every,e-commerce platform that i come across,and that is a prompt to set up your,privacy policy and your terms and,conditions and i hop on about this a lot,in my reviews and comparisons because,these are important legal documents for,your site they're there to protect not,only your customer but also you as well,it's your protection as a business and i,really would like to see these prompts,added to the setup guides because say,they are very important documents but,overall the signup process is quite a,long-winded one but when you actually go,through and complete most of that and,actually go into your online store it's,actually pretty good setup guide and the,dashboard itself is a nice place to use,it's got a very simple layer to it's not,over complicated and all the headings,are well labeled and it's very easy to,navigate around all the sections of your,online store so the actual dashboard,itself is very very nice to use but,what's this like to do with shopify,while signing up to shopify is so much,easier because basically you just need,your email address and create a password,and then once you've signed up to that,they'll ask you a couple of questions,about where your stores are the kind of,things that you're selling and then they,go through and set your store up for you,it takes a minute to sign up to shopify,that's it it's super simple and then,you're taken through to your dashboard,but it doesn't look just like this one,on screen because this is my kind of,time served demo store instead it will,look a little bit more like this this is,my box fresh demo store that i've done,absolutely nothing too,and you'll have this short setup guide,now i don't know why it is but every,time i seem to log on to this demo store,this setup guide seems to change,sometimes it's got five options,sometimes it's got six then it's down to,four then it's down to three it's back,up to four it just seems to change i,don't know why but it is a very basic,setup guide and it includes most of the,things you need now i don't know why,it's telling me to find products rather,than just having me set up my first,product maybe that's just a problem that,shopify does but other options include,customizing your theme adding a domain,name and setting up payments,now there are a couple of options,missing from here setting up your,shipping options that's a pretty basic,one that you want to set up,also configuring your privacy policy and,terms and conditions that's missing as,well just seems a bit too basic for me,which is quite surprising considering,shopify is aimed at people who are brand,new to e-commerce as well as people who,are very established in the world of,e-commerce so i'm quite surprised that,the setup guide isn't better than what,it is i do expect it to be better maybe,i've just got higher standards but,overall the shopify dashboard is a nice,place to be it's very simply laid out,all of the headings are well labeled and,it's very easy to navigate when it comes,to the two dashboards head to head,there's not much to choose between the,two they're both very very easy to use,so next up let's look at inventory,management because it's one of the most,important things when it comes to your,store now we've already looked at the,new page but let's go back into it with,square,and we're going to add a new,item as you can see i've already set one,up original i know test product so we're,going to create a new item now all of,the options are,single page layouts so we've got the,physical product you can see there's,different options all the way down the,page,now for each product type there's a,different set of options so if we go,into digital it will remove some of the,options that are available so you won't,have things like shipping and things,like that set up when it comes to,digital products and each individual,product type has its own page layout but,it's still this single page layout,that's very easy to use it's very simple,to navigate your way around because,you've just got your main item,information then you've got some,additional information variations,different options categories and then,search engine optimization settings at,the bottom very simple very easy to do,now when it comes to organizing your,products so setting up a product,hierarchy,square is very good so let's come out of,this page,yes i want to cancel this product and if,we go into site categories we can add a,category,and what we can do is we can add parent,categories if we want to but more,importantly we can add subcategories as,well,because if we go and click on this plus,icon here we can add a subcategory to,that test category if we want to and you,can create multiple levels to this as,well so you can have a child of a child,which creates a really good product,hierarchy for your site and it could,make it a lot easier for customers to,navigate around your site which makes,life very easy,but what about once you've got all your,inventory set up to go in and actually,manage it because,this is an important part when you've,got a lot of products set up on your,store you want to be able to just go in,and make quick and easy edits to things,like start quantities etc and honestly,square isn't that good when it comes to,this because they don't have many bulk,editors so if you select our product,click on bulk edit,there's not many options available,there's no options to update the,quantity and the sale price option is,only if you point it on sale it's not,actually the price you're selling it for,if that makes sense so you can't go in,and just edit this price you actually,have to go in and do that on an,individual product basis and this isn't,great for me because if you've got a,large product inventory you don't want,to be going through and editing the,products on an individual basis it's,going to take you a lot of time to do,this i just want to be able to go in,make quick and easy edits to my start,quantity or pricing from an overview,menu i don't want to do this,individually because it's just going to,take me so much time when you've got,hundreds or thousands of products,every second counts because time is,money so i would like to see a better,bulk editor tool added to square it,would just make the process a lot,simpler so what about shopify when it,comes to inventory management well,similar to square the product page is a,single page layout so if we add a new,product as you can see it's a single,page layout,and i would say it's,possibly easier to use than squares but,there's really not much in between the,two both of them are very simple very,easy to use pages and you've got all the,different options that you need now,because shopify is quite limited on the,types of products you can sell with,physical digital etc basically this page,is set up just for physical products but,if you want to sell a service product,it's very easy to do because you just,turn shipping off and then it becomes a,service based product but let's say if,you want to sell digital products or,anything like that you are going to have,to install an app for that but overall a,very simple very easy to use page,now when it comes to organizing your,products shopify is a little bit more,complicated than square because they use,what's called collections and there's a,couple of different types you can choose,from so if you click on create a,collection i'll show you what i mean the,first one is a manual collection this,acts very similar to a traditional,category where you manually add products,to this collection very simple very easy,to do,automated is a bit more complicated and,it does take a bit of time to get your,head around it and it took me a bit of,time to actually practice it go through,see how this actually works because it's,based on rules that you set so you set,the conditions here so you've got,product tags you've got product title,which includes words you can also do it,on price there's many different options,when it comes to setting up an automated,collection and it does take a little bit,of time to learn exactly how to do this,because when you're just getting started,it seems very confusing but when you go,through and actually learn it i'll leave,a link to a video up here where i've,done a better tutorial on how to do,these collections how to set them up for,automated collections etc which might be,helpful,but it is a more complicated process,another drawback with shopify's,collections as well is you can't set up,sub collections or child collections you,can only set up one level of collections,and this is quite limited now there are,some workarounds you can do on the front,end of your site so it looks like you've,got different levels of collections but,in the back end you can't do it like,that i don't know why shopify have done,this but it is somewhat limiting once,again i've done a tutorial on sub,collections which i'll leave a link to,up here as well but overall the,collections with shopify could be a bit,simpler and there's a few things they,could add just to make it a little bit,better now when it comes to managing,your inventory shopify is,awesome and i do mean that because it's,very very good so if you come out of,this and go into our product overview,page select all of the products and then,click on edit products it opens one of,their bulk editors there's actually two,to choose from but i think this is the,better of the two,and what you can do is you can,set which field you want available so if,we click on the add field option you can,see there's so many different options,you can change the title tags you can,change the availability you can also do,inventory quantity as well so if we add,that we can change the quantity,it's super simple to do and you've got,so much more control in fact there's,very few reasons why you'd actually have,to go back in and edit the product on an,individual basis maybe updating pictures,and things like that but for most things,you can do it from the bulk editor which,just will make life so much easier if,you've got a large product inventory now,the final thing i'm going to look at is,order management now unfortunately i,can't show this on square because i,haven't set up the square payment,gateway properly i can't actually create,a test order so unfortunately i can't,show you how good or bad it is because i,haven't set it up maybe that's a bad,thing on me but it comes with the,process of setting up square you have to,get everything basically set up before,you can start using it which i don't,really like i wish i could just test,this out in basically a test environment,but what about shopify on this one well,shopify is,okay when it comes to order management,it's not great it's not bad either now,there are some bulk options available so,if we select all of our orders as you,can see you can change the fulfillment,status you can capture payments you can,create shipping labels so you can,basically buy shipping labels but if you,want to print anything off the thing,you're limited to as standard is you can,print packing slips if you want to print,any orders off any invoices things like,that you are going to have to use a,third-party app for that now there are,some really good ones the one i think is,order printer pro i think it's a,fantastic app very very good i've done a,video on that as well which i'll leave a,link to up here,and that makes order management so much,easier when it comes to shopify,especially if you want to print orders,off directly from your dashboard but,other things you can do in bulk is you,can export the order information so if,you're using third party basic order,management or shipping software you can,export all of your audit information,from shopify and then import it into,your chosen provider,or you can set up integrations via the,app store if that company happens to,have an app which will streamline the,process even more,so which one is the better of the two,options when it comes to squares online,store or shopify now for me personally,even though it's the more expensive,option i do think shopify is the better,all-round platform it just seems to,offer more tools available for,e-commerce businesses now while square,is very very good i'm not denying that,one at all it does feel somewhat limited,with things like payment gateways it,just doesn't seem particularly scalable,to be a platform that you could use for,a big business if you've got an existing,say bricks and mortar store and you,already use the square points of sale,then yeah why not go for a square's,online store because you can manage,everything from one dashboard but if,you're setting up a standalone ecommerce,store i do think shopify is the better,option even though you are going to need,some apps for certain things if you're,selling digital products or memberships,etc,for me as a core platform it just seems,to offer more and it's definitely a,scalable platform as well the ball tools,are very good and it's designed for,businesses of all sizes whereas i think,square is more for small to medium-sized,businesses whereas shopify definitely,could be used for big big businesses,that's why they've got shopify plus as,well,so both are very good options and i,would actually recommend trying them,both out to see which one's going to fit,your business best but for me if you're,building a standalone e-commerce store i,would give it to shopify i just think,it's the better all-around platform,so thank you for watching i hope you,found this video helpful if you have a,like would be absolutely awesome also if,you'd like to support the channel you,can do by buying me a coffee using the,link in the description and that is very,much appreciated so once again guys,thank you so much for watching i really,really do appreciate it stay awesome and,i will see you in the next one

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